Boultbee Flight Academy has created a Spitfire Mk IX flight simulator, using a real fuselage with authentic gauges, controls and instruments.
The simulator was installed in a 3.4m x 4m x 2.9m room adjacent to the pilots’ briefing room. The 3.2m-radius spherical dome screen was manufactured in bespoke segments to allow installation with minimum clearance in the height and width domains.
Seven Optoma W505 projectors with short-throw 0.8:1 lenses were positioned and oriented so the images covered the spherical screen completely and the fuselage, with its canopy closed, didn’t create any shadows on the screen.
The simulator offers a horizontal field of view of 225° and a vertical field of view from -55° to 110°, giving the pilot 100% coverage of the areas visible from their eye-point with the cockpit closed.
